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Artisan's review of Autotrader - www.autotrader.co.uk

I’ve used Autotrader for over 30 years to privately buy and sell cars. It’s still probably the best way to sell a car as it’s viewed by more genuine buyers that any other website. It’s good to see pictures of the cars for sale and the information is pretty comprehensive. You can view the fuel consumption, tax band, insurance group, weight and size of the vehicles. There’s also a ‘compare’ section which allows you to compare the features of several different cars at the same time. The site also links to owner’s car reviews and insurance quotes.
When buying a car through Autotrader the watchword is Beware! There are so many fraudulent sellers who are just trying to get your money. Autotrader do their best to weed out the fraudsters and there’s a help section to prevent fraud but they keep getting through. Fraudsters use what appear to be genuine car sales companies with an email address in the picture which is the first alert that they’re almost certainly fraudsters. Messages such as “I’m away from the office and only available by email” is another. Always, always do a HPI check, recently I was looking for a car for my Daughter and found a suitable one on Autotrader; It didn’t mention any problems with the car but the HPI check said it was a Cat C insurance write off. It cost me £20.00 for the HPI report but it saves hundreds. There’s a section on the Autotrader site that allows you to report adverts which I encourage everyone to use but I reported this particular advertisement and nothing was done. With Autotrader ‘if it sounds too good to be true it’s probably a scam’!